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The Space Elevator Development Program 55th International Astronautical Congress 2004 - Vancouver, Canada IAC-04-IAA.3.8.2.01 THE SPACE ELEVATOR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM Bradley C. Edwards Carbon Designs, Inc., United States [email protected] ABSTRACT For 40 years, the space elevator has been a concept in science fiction and appearing occasionally in technical journals. Versions of the space elevator concept have generally been megalithic in design. However, recent advances in technology and new designs for an initial space elevator have presented a much smaller and a more realistic version that has created a renewed interest in serious technical study. There are now over a dozen entities and hundreds of engineers and scientists with active research related to the space elevator. The activity includes conferences, engineering competitions, extensive media coverage, international collaborations, publications and private investment. These activities are rapidly expanding with the number of publications in 2004 nearly ten times the total for the prior forty years. INTRODUCTION The space elevator concept has been around for spacecraft, the power delivery system, many years (Tower of Babel, Jack and the challenges to the system, etc. Beanstalk, Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise, Robinson’s Red Mars) and between 1960 and The basic design presented in the NIAC work 1999 a few technical studies addressed the has stressed simplicity – a single, small, static basics of the system (Moravec, 1977; Isaacs, ribbon with mechanical climbers that ascend 1966; Pearson, 1975; Smitherman, 2000). These using conventional electric motors (figure 1). studies addressed the oscillations inherit in the The design implements conventional technology system, the taper requirements, and the general with little or no development wherever possible. difficulties but did not cover most of the technical The design is easy to grasp and analyze and details of construction and operation. may present a reasonable first system though may not present the optimal final design for In 2000, Edwards published a unique design for future generations of elevators. This initial effort the space elevator and followed this publication completed with $570,000 in funding has been the with an overview engineering funded by NASA’s catalyst for variant designs and additional Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The studies. final report from the Phase I effort and book resulting from the Phase II effort (Edwards, The initial effort also generated a template for 2003) outline the basics of a space elevator. defining the challenges and where research and These publications go through the basic ribbon engineering were most critically needed. Some design, the climber design, the deployment items such as the anchor station have been viewed as straightforward and understood in 55th International Astronautical Congress 2004 - Vancouver, Canada Figure 1: Illustration of the first space elevator illustrating the various components. Insets from left to right: anchor station with power beaming station, carbon nanotubes, underside of climber showing the power beaming component, the upper end of the elevator with the initial deployment spacecraft and climber as counterweights. (Image from Discover Magazine) terms of current technology where as other are a new development (Li, 2004) though CNT components, such as the ribbon and system composite fibers have been made with as high dynamics, are unique and considered as 60% CNTs, strengths comparable to steel challenges. By defining the challenges the (5% CNTs by weight) and kilometers in length. problem has been broken down into pieces that The high-strength material being the primary can be investigated by individuals or groups. hurdle to construction it has also become the This accessibility of the problem has spawned focus of several efforts. growing interest in engineering and research communities. For example, in 2000, a search on The ribbon design and deployment are being re- the Internet for ‘space elevator’ would have examined in terms of possibly building the ribbon produced several hundred links. The same by attaching full width segments end-to-end search today will return over 150,000 links. instead by of the baseline increasing the width by splicing additional ribbons onto an initial small The primary technical hurdle for construction of ribbon. the space elevator is the production of the high- strength material with a tensile strength of 100 The system dynamics has also become an active GPa. At the current time, carbon nanotubes area of study due to its ease of entry. The (CNTs) have been measured with tensile dynamics that are now being investigated range strengths of 200 GPa. CNTs have been spun into from the smallest scale (individual fibers) to the yarns of pure carbon nanotubes and have been largest (finite element modeling of the full 62,000 implemented in composite fibers. The spun fibers mile ribbon). Small-scale dynamics revolve 55th International Astronautical Congress 2004 - Vancouver, Canada around the degradation of the ribbon Trade studies are beginning to examine the components at the individual fiber and possibility of using a moving looped ribbon, interconnect level. Primarily this pertains to oscillating ribbon, or sets of pulleys. breakage of individual fibers in the ribbon and how the ribbon responds. Large-scale Due to the activity there has also been an dynamics involve the oscillations, profile increased need for a detailed overall systems variations and how the ribbon generally engineering of the program. The efforts to date responds as a system. have been disjoint and independent. Efforts to coordinate the efforts will result in a more The climber, being a straightforward mechanical efficient development program. system, has also attracted interest in the form of engineering competitions and detailed design To lay out the work in progress and how it is studies. The various designs now being being addressed the space elevator considered include the baseline tread system, development program can be discussed by a set pinching rollers, and offset rollers. Few new of topics: designs for the power transmission have been 1. Research groups presented. 2. Research activities 3. Public interest With the increasing interest there has also been 4. Private interest a healthy re-examination of the baseline design. 5. Complimentary development RESEARCH GROUPS INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH together past work and current efforts into a (ISR) / NASA’S MARSHALL SPACE FLIGHT database and attempt to illustrate the priority CENTER (MSFC) issues and the solutions. This framework for data archival and trade-off evaluation is important for effective management of a project ISR/MSFC is slated to receive $2.485M for 2004 with the size and complexity of the space to conduct Pre-Phase A / Phase A engineering elevator. studies. This funding is a congressional appropriation that will be directed by NASA’s TASK 2: HIGH STRENGTH MATERIALS Marshall Space Flight Center. The funding for the 2004 fiscal year arrived at ISR/MSFC for use in ISR/MSFC will be putting a small fraction of their mid-August, 2004. funds toward development and evaluation of high strength materials. Part of this will be to The ISR/MSFC development effort has six tasks: organize a CNT materials workshop which may 1. Systems engineering happen in November, 2004, in Kentucky. 2. High strength materials 3. Ribbon dynamics TASK 3: RIBBON DYNAMICS 4. Ribbon design ISR/MSFC has begun to compile the information 5. Prototype climber on the drivers in the dynamics area. These 6. Distribution of Results include: atomic oxygen, debris, electric and magnetic fields, radiation, orbital dynamics, and These tasks were selected as the most critical thermal loads. Complete simulations are being from either the program or technology developed to understand quantitatively how development perspective. these drivers will affect the ribbon at the various scales. This work is in collaboration with David TASK 1: SYSTEMS ENGINEERING Lang (see below). The interactions and interdependence of the various space elevator subsystems and driving TASK 4: RIBBON DESIGN factors have not been quantified in detail and Utilizing the results of the ribbon dynamics compiled for easy access. ISR plans to bring efforts, ISR/MSFC plans to build and test 55th International Astronautical Congress 2004 - Vancouver, Canada segments of ribbons with materials of varying The LANL radiation studies have found that there strength and stiffness as well as ribbons with will be operational challenges to transporting varying interconnects. The tests will be used to humans on the space elevator unless the understand what issues will arise as higher- climbers can move more quickly or be shielded. strength material is used. One of the main issues Solutions for this problem are being studied. will be the recoil dynamics of broken fibers and where the stored energy goes. In conventional The LANL studies on solar power satellites have materials this is not a problem but at the tensions found that the space elevator could be used in the space elevator the stored energy could be effectively to construct an economically released in ways that could cause more serious competitive system for delivering clean energy collateral damage. By testing and modeling the for terrestrial uses. ribbons with increasing strength ISR/MSFC hopes to design a ribbon that readily handles the energy release. TASK 5: PROTOTYPE CLIMBER In this task ISR/MSFC plans to construct several small prototype climbers and begin quantifying the issues. The first two prototypes are under construction with different teams and different thrusts. The tracking and overall design issues are the first being addressed (see figure 2). TASK 6: DISTRIBUTION OF RESULTS ISR/MSFC started pushing to finish Pre-Phase A efforts and begin Phase A level work. The effort plans to distribute the results of work in the form of conferences, reviewed papers and access to the systems database being produced. LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY A set of of researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has acquired internal funding for several basic studies and to support conference organization.
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